


strokes her blistered hand across my glass container

by swimthewholeriogrande



Series: Call This Living [6]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt Jake Peralta, Nightmares, Post-Prison, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 12:39:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17683625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: Jake Peralta goes to therapy and is well, is definitely, definitely well.





	strokes her blistered hand across my glass container

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short one to show Jake is going to therapy!  
> Title from Pyotr by Bad Books

There were certain details that Jake could not help but fixate on.

He kept running his finger over a small tear in the leather of the armchair; every so often his uneven nail would catch and snag in the stuffing and jerk his pinky back. His therapist's glasses - his third one, because he just couldn't seem to click with any of them - were glinting and spreading a rainbow over the floor. It was brightly, absurdly sunny. And Jake's pulse was so slow in his wrist, tripping over itself, stumbling through his body. He could feel it in his eyelids.

"Let's talk about Amy." the woman said; Jake had forgotten her name ten minutes ago and it was far too late to ask again. Her eyes were intense and beady like a bird of prey's, fixating on him and leaving no space to hide. "How are the two of you handling this?"

This, Jake knew, was a delicate way to refer to the PTSD he'd dragged kicking and screaming out of federal prison. His nail catches in the leather again. "Okay." he mumbled. "It's hard. But okay."

She checks her notes."How long has it been sinyour release?"

He knows it to the hour, to the minute, the second. "I think about nine months."

She hums. "Well, it'll take time, Jacob. You can't fix something like this over night - over a year, even. But it will stop being so hard one day."

Jake doesn't answer, mullishly wriggling his toes in his sneakers and breaking eye contact. When is one day? The therapist sighs.

"And the nightmares?"

"Uh, a little less frequent, I guess. Maybe once or twice a week."

"Do they still focus on the same events?"

The knife between his ribs, a heavy baton on the back of his skull, cold slimy shower floors, Caleb's blank eyes, hands around his wrists, arms, throat - "Yeah." Jake swallows. "Yeah, same as usual."

"Would you describe your most recent, if you're able?"

He'd been face down in the yard, gravel cutting his cheek, a guard's knee planted between his shoulderblades. "Stay the fuck down," was growled in his ear but he already had, he hadn't been doing anything, it wasn't his fault -

"Jacob?"

Her voice is like tepid water. Jake turns his face to the light, blinding with possibilities of a better life, any other life than this. "You know," he says dully, "the usual."


End file.
